Artist of the Week Interview: Disturbed

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Disturbed return with all guns blazing on their sixth full-length album, Immortalized [Reprise Records], out this Friday, August 21. It could very well land the Chicago heavy metal quartet—David Draiman [vocals], Dan Donegan [guitar], Mike Wengren [drums], and John Moyer [bass]—their fifth consecutive debut on the Billboard Top 200. It's been five long years since their last offering Asylum and four since they formally commenced a "Hiatus." Thankfully, the beast is awake with its best album yet and ready to take over hard music again. In this exclusive interview, David Draiman discusses making Immortalized in secret, the dark stories behind the songs, and so much more.

Did recording Immortalized in secret lessen the pressure of making the album?

I think that it made it worse, to be honest. Normally you have other people to bounce stuff off of, right? You can play it for your buddies, your friends, and your close circle. You aren't ready to let the music out yet, but you can at least let people hear it, and you can let people know it exists. We couldn't even let people know it existed. We finished the record in January and were not able to play it for anyone until June. It was torturous [Laughs]. It's been done for a while. It was a self-imposed and self-created vacuum.

Was there a moment where the vision crystallized?

It just happened that way then and wasn't part of any master plan. Everybody felt that we wanted to go in each and every day. It wasn't the matter of having any game plan but going in the direction that felt good.

Your lyrics continue to evolve and get deeper. It's also more vivid...

It has definitely gone much more of the direction of storytelling. It's less cryptic, I thank you for that compliment, and I hope that we are getting better as time goes on. This was the first time that major lyrical contributions were made outside my own sphere of creativity. Danny made some great suggestions on a few songs, "Save Our Last Goodbye" was one of them. That really was inspired from a life experience of his—someone that was close to him that he lost to cancer. Losing a loved one is something that each and every one of us can relate to. He penned some of the lyrics, and I just gently massaged it. There wasn't much of a change. That was a unique situation for this record too. I think that the songs have become more and more "Wearing your heart on your sleeve," storytelling types-of-narratives as opposed to the being cryptic and open to self-interpretation type-of-thing. It is pretty blatant and literal as you said.